P4 Price Cuts Squeeze Celerons

It used to be simple for buyers of Intel-based systems: Units with Celeron chips were for PC consumers on a budget, while Pentium-based computers were for power users. But today, with Pentium 4 system prices plummeting faster than a downhill skier on a run at the Winter Olympics, does the conventional wisdom still seem valid?

Yes and no. Shrinking prices for CPUs in general mean that the price gap separating cheap chips from their upmarket siblings has narrowed. Muddying the waters further is the fact that clock speeds don't tell the whole performance story.

To see exactly how far apart the prices of similar P4- and Celeron-based systems are, we configured a pair of PCs with the two chips at each of three major vendors' Web sites: Compaq, Dell, and Gateway. As much as possible, we opted for very similar or identical components--same-size hard drives, 256MB of RAM, similar monitors, and so on. The P4 PCs had 1.4-GHz to 1.6-GHz CPUs; the Celerons used either 1.1-GHz or 1.2-GHz chips. Not surprisingly, in view of the target buyers, the P4 systems came with graphics boards, while the Celerons provided integrated graphics on their motherboards.

The Pentium PCs were always more costly, but not by a huge amount. Price differences ranged from $200 between the two Gateways (the 1.5-GHz P4 unit cost $1059, while the 1.1-GHz Celeron cost $859) to a scant $61 between the two Compaqs (one PC had a 1.6-GHz P4, and the other a 1.2-GHz Celeron).

You're likely to notice the performance difference between Celeron and Pentium 4 systems running business apps, however. Though we did not test the specific systems we priced at the Web sites, a 1.1-GHz Celeron system with 256MB of RAM that PC World did recently test earned a PC WorldBench 4 score of 81, while five tested 1.5-GHz P4 systems with 256MB of RAM averaged a 91 score--a difference of about 12 percent.

What does it mean for buyers? The truly cost-conscious will still stick with Celerons, says Giga Information Group research fellow Rob Enderle. "After all, $100 is $100, and that adds up if you're a corporate buyer purchasing hundreds of PCs," he says.

Other users are likely to find P4s increasingly enticing. But if you're leaning toward a P4-based PC, make sure you're not seduced by an attractive price tag into picking up a system that skimps on other useful components--that's one way vendors are bringing P4 systems even closer in price to their Celeron siblings.